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Change and Continuity in the Recruitment of Italian Political Terrorists

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Change and Continuity in the Recruitment of Italian Political Terrorists Journal of Political Science Volume 14 Number 1 Article 6 November 1986 Change and Continuity in the Recruitment of Italian Political Terrorists Leonard Weinberg William Eubank Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Weinberg, Leonard and Eubank, William (1986) "Change and Continuity in the Recruitment of Italian Political Terrorists," Journal of Political Science: Vol. 14 : No. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops/vol14/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Politics at CCU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Political Science by an authorized editor of CCU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Change and Continuity in the Recruitment of Italian Political Terrorists: 1970-1984 LEONARD W EINB ERG AND WILLIAM L EE EUBANK University of Nevada-Reno (This is a revision of a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, August 29-September 1, 1985) Understanding the growth of political terrorism has become a central concern expressed in the professional literature. Various techniques have been used to measure the spread of terrorist events both within and between nations. 1 As part of this endeavor analysts have drawn parallels between the spread of contagious diseases and outbreaks of terrorist activities. And naturally enough, given the way in which the situation has been defined, these analysts have sought to prescribe the most appropriate therapies with which to reduce or eliminate the infection. In view of the way in which the problem has been approached, it is somewhat surprising that more attention has not been focused on the bearers of the contagion: the terrorists themselves. This is not to say that observers of political terrorism have ignored the perpetrators: far from it. The literature abounds with excellent studies of the social and psychological characteristics of these individuals. 2 But these investigations, intended to produce a 'terrorist profile,• seem not to take into account the possibility that different sorts of people might be attracted to terrorism at different stages in the spread of the phenomenon. Do people from the same or similar backgrounds become involved in terrorist operations over the entire life­ span of a terrorist organization? Or, does the susceptibility vary among in­ dividuals the longer the outbreak is sustained? Given the enormous attention terrorist activities receive in the mass media, it seems reasonable to believe that individuals who join or form ter­ rorist groups after a terrorist episode has begun would confront a different situation than those who were responsible for its initiation. At a minimum, the circumstances would be altered by virtue of the fact that the latecomers would be aware of the various costs, risks and opportunities surrounding the decision to become the member of a terrorist band. But do changes in circumstances mean changes in the kinds of people who become terrorists? Of course, in any number of countries this question is rendered moot because the authorities succeed in isolating and repressing the terrorist organizations before they can recruit new members from outside the ranks of their founders . This has not been the case in Italy however. Among the industrialized democracies, Italy has experienced one of the most protracted national episodes of political terrorism. The episode is widely regarded as having 43 begun with the bombing of the National Agricultural Bank of Piazza Fon­ tana in Milan in December 1969 and not to have ended, or even subsided, until the wave of arrests that followed the release of American General James Dozier from his Red Brigades' kidnappers in 1982. At a reduced level of intensity, the terrorism continues to the present. In addition to its duration there are several other features of the Italian terrorist experience that are important to call to the reader's attention. 3 First, as distinguished from the long-lived experiences of Northern Ireland and the Basque country of Spain, causes of a nationalist-separatist nature were not significant stimuli for the outbeak of terrorism. Instead, the sources in the Italian case appear to have been predominantly ideological, sources not rooted in the long-standing grievances of a particular ethnic or religious community; that is, groups whose members often may serve as constant pools from which terrorist bands may recruit new adherents. Sec­ ond, the ideologies that motivated Italian terrorists were not exclusively of leftist origin. In addition to groups animated by revolutionary communist objectives, variously defined, a substantial amount of the violence was the work of formations that derived their inspiration from Fascist or neo­ Fascist doctrines . Another characteristic of the Italian experience concerns the timing of the violence. There was an initial wave of terrorism beginning in 1969 and extending to 1976. By the middle of that year most members of the Red Brigades' 'historic nucleus' as well as most members of the Armed Pro­ letarian Nuclei and Partisan Action Groups, the other major leftist groups, had been arrested. Furthermore, the initial wave of violent neo-Fascist organizations, the New Order, National Vanguard, the National Front and others, had been dissolved by the authorities and many of their leaders, militants and sponsors had met the same fate as their leftist counterparts. In fact, it appeared as if the terrorist episode had come to an end. But this was not to be. Nineteen seventy-seven witnessed the reignition of terrorist violence. New groups on both the Left and Right arose to take the place of the old; in turn, these bands succeeded in recruiting large numbers of new adherents. Further, old groups, notably the Red Brigades, managed to at­ tract a largely new generation(s) of members. What then followed in the next several years was a dramatic escalation in the numbers of terrorist events throughout the country. The style of the violence was also somewhat different. Previously the leftist groups had carried out "exemplary actions" intended to bring their cause to the attention of the working class. In the new phase they began to wage revolutionary "campaigns" against the bourgeois system and to direct their efforts against "the heart of the state." The neo-Fascist groups also changed tactics and exhibited a willingness to attack selected representatives of government authority. Finally, the second spasm of terrorism differed from the initial one by virtue of the political coloration of those groups responsible for committing the bulk of it.• Measured in terms of direction, the first wave of violence was dominated by the neo-Fascists. It was they who were responsible for the ma­ jority of violent events, including the massacres at Piazza Fontana as well as 44 those in Brescia and on the express train Italicus both in 1974. The Red Brigades, on the other hand, did not kill their first victim until 1974. Despite the formation of new neo-Fascist groups (e.g., Third Position, Nuclei of Armed Revolutionaries) after the mid 1970's, it was the revolutionary com­ munist ones that dominated terrorist activities from 1977. There was, in short, a shift from Black to Red. II Bearing in mind the above account, the question we intend to address is this: In what ways, if any, did individuals who became involved in terrorist activities before 1977 differ from those whose careers in terrorism began in or followed that year? To answer this question biographical information was obtained concerning 2,512 individuals who were either arrested or for whom warrants were issued for having committed, planned or supported acts of political terrorism between 1970 and the first half of 1984. This in­ formation was derived from two national circulation newspapers, La Stam­ pa of Turin and La Repubblica of Rome, as well as court records (re­ quisitorie, ordinanzelsentenze and sentenze) from many though not all of the major terrorist trials.' The data file taken from these sources does not represent a sample, it is instead a reasonably extensive collection of the Italian terrorist population. The information collected about the terrorists included their gender, communities and regions of birth as well as those of adult residence. Aside from these characteristics, information was also recorded concerning their occupational backgrounds, family relationships and pre-terrorist political involvements. Finally, we noted in what year they were arrested/identified as terrorists, their ages at that time (and for reasons to be made clear later, their ages in 1969), the particular terrorist organiza­ tion with which they were affiliated and the roles they played inside the groups. However, the investigators cannot be certain but that either they or their sources failed to locate other individuals whose behavior would war­ rant inclusion. Further, the possibility exists that a number of individuals whose records appear in the file were, in fact, innocent of the crimes they were alleged to have committed . Last on our list of qualifications is the fact that the careers of some terrorists overlapped the two periods into which we have divided the episode. Some individuals may have begun their in­ volvements before 1977 but only came to the attention of the authorities during or after that year. In most cases, it was possible to correct for this problem based on the person's terrorist group affiliation. That is, if the per­ son was identified as a member of a group like the New Order of the Nuclei of Armed Proletarians, organizations whose operations were largely con­ fined to the first period, the individual was presumed to have begun his/her involvement at that time and assigned a position accordingly. Inevitably though some individuals escaped this procedure.
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